Rank your favorite arcade systems/hardware

[Lord British]

I'm curious where some of you would rank your favorite arcade boards.

For example, you could put TOAPLAN VERSION 1 on your list.

Which includes:

Demon's World / Horror Story
Fire Shark / Same! Same! Same!
Hellfire
Out Zone
Rally Bike / Dash Yarou
Truxton / Tatsujin
Vimana
Zero Wing

Might take you a bit to look through, but I'm guessing some of you probably know right off the bat. I just used this site for reference: https://www.system16.com/museum.php?id=9. The upper left has the major company links.

You can do a Top 3 or Top 5 or Top 30, whatever.

[BIL]

IREM M72 immediately comes to mind. R-Type I & II, Image Fight, X-Multiply, Dragon Breed, Mr. Heli... plus some iconic other-genre favourites like Saigo no Nindou, Daiku no Gen-san, and Vigilante. Beyond the distinct design and visual motifs of the era, what really unifies them is that distinctly bright, crunchy audio, especially the ones with OSTs by the great Masahiko Ishida. Image Fight in particular, those clarion stage clear jingles, you can hear the chrome.

[jehu]

Toaplan V.2.

Almost too easy for me to choose my #1, even over other heavy hitters like Irem’s boards or Cave’s.

If they count, CPS2 and Taito’s F3 are some of the PCBaddest Bitches on the block.

[Hazuki]

CPS1, CPS2 and NeoGeo MVS for me. Played those games through most of my life.

[DMC]

As a fan of the 1996-2003 era of shmups I'd go:
STV, CPS2, Toaplan 2, PGM, Psikyo SH2

And If I try to expand the time period, I'd go with Williams 6809 Rev.1 (Robotron, Defender, Joust, Sinistar) and Cave 1000b or 1000d.
Perhaps a nice mix would be:

• Williams 6809 Rev.1

• Toaplan 2

• STV

• Psikyo SH2

• Cave 1000b

This would cover games like Defender, Battle Garegga, Radiant Silvergun, Gunbird 2, and Mushihimesama Futari. Missing some late 80s shooters though, but that's also the era I'm the least interested in, and the games are so spread out on different systems. Irem M72 is pretty solid though with the R-types in front.
Edit: Okay, this would be my list if I tried to make as versatile as possible with games spanning from 1981 to 2012 while still including lots of personal favourites. Missing some Taito and Psikyo but what can you do.

• Williams 6809 Rev.1

• Irem M72

• Toaplan 2

• CPS2

• Cave 1000d

[PerishedFraud ឵឵]

Namco system 1 is pretty cool. It has a short entry list but some bangers are included: Dragon Spirit, Dangerous Seed and Splatterhouse come to mind.

Of course there's also some meme games (that BIL likes to reference): baraduke 2 and pistol daimyo, but that's just a bonus. (Baraduke 2 is also actually cool)

I did a quick search on the system before posting just to see if I missed anything. Turns out I never played Blast Off, and prolly should.

There's also Berabow Man, and oh boy. This game was on some mame collection I had as a kid and it felt like a fever dream. Seeing it again today really surprised me.

[BIL]

Of course there's also some meme games (that BIL likes to reference): baraduke 2 and pistol daimyo, but that's just a bonus. (Baraduke 2 is also actually cool)

I suspect Pistol Daimyo's a lot more enjoyable with rapid small charges, which its ACA release is set up for. Nice sense of parity between the onrushing horde and your merrily bouncing balls. I think I'd have to sort out a hardware equivalent to like it as much on a real board. Cool game.

Bravo/Beraboh Man has some quality, as expected of the great Norio Nakagata (Genpei Toumaden, and ranking #1 meme STG Abarenbou Tengu, aka Zombie Nation HARD mode = driver assist OFF ) I seem to recall that hori stage being pretty fuckin hawt, and I love this art, at any rate.

[PerishedFraud ឵឵]

Having now played Blast Off, I can say that this game rules and highly recommend it. Really refreshing! Last level was a piece of shit though, clearly just meant to eat money.

[Lord British]

Namco system 1 is pretty cool. It has a short entry list but some bangers are included: Dragon Spirit, Dangerous Seed and Splatterhouse come to mind.

Yeah, that's a good short list, and I like Blazer a lot actually.

[spmbx]

CPS1, CPS2, NeoGeo (mainly back in the day. They still look nice but not as impressive as back then).
Additionally most things that do crazy 3d and/or 2d sprite rotating/zooming in preferably 60fps like for example (but not limited to) the sega superscaler stuff.

[Some-Mist]

Game library aside (even though there are serious bangers in there), cv1000b/cv1000d for the small form factor and clean machine pressed components.

Otherwise, I really enjoy cp systems design (screw suicide batteries tho) and carts like MVS and PGM.

[To Far Away Times]

It's gotta be the Neo Geo MVS right? The MVS came out in 1990, and it's last official game, Samurai Showdown V Special, didn't come out until 2004. That's gotta count for something.

There were quite a few a legendary games in that lineup.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

It's gotta be the Neo Geo MVS right? The MVS came out in 1990, and it's last official game, Samurai Showdown V Special, didn't come out until 2004. That's gotta count for something.

There were quite a few a legendary games in that lineup.

I remember seeing Yumekubo's Blazing Star for the first time up & running on a 4-Slot MVS "Big Red" cab setup back in February of 1998 at the local arcade called Nickle Play (Blazing Star made it's grand debut in both Japan & the USA in February of 1998). It only cost a mere four nickels per credit to play Blazing Star anyways. The arcade owner was an arcade STG enthusiast as he stocked up the arcade with stg game pcbs like Psikyo's Strikers 1945 (distributed by American arcade subsidairy Jaleco USA in 1995), Atlus/Cave's Donpachi (distributed by Atlus USA arcade subsidiary back in 1995), Seibu Kaihatsu's SPI based Viper Phase 1 U.S.A. and Raiden Fighters (distributed by American arcade licensee Fabtek respectively in 1995 and 1996), Toaplan's OutZone and even the oddball Dooyoon's swan-song arcade STG title of R-Shark as well. Most other local arcades would have the occasional arcade stg title of Seibu Kaihatsu's Raiden II up and running in the mid-1990s as it was still quite a popular game to play during that time. Sadly, the Nickle Play arcade lost it's business lease and shut down in May of 1998.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[Sumez]

Taito F3 would be pretty high for me, for the nice interchangeable cartridges, fantastic library, and solid reliable hardware that I have yet to experience any faults on.
But man, that god damn fan is a big fat minus.

In terms of pure consistent quality in their library, CPS1 and CPS2 both rank extremely high, and both represent my favourite era of arcade games, with beautiful 2D graphical capabilities. Those suicide batteries however, fuck that crap. Also, CPS2 cartridges are far too big and annoying to store. F3 is fine to me, because they aren't larger than your average arcade PCB - a single CPS2 daughterboard is bigger than two Irem double-layer boards. Oh yeah, and the fans are even noisier than F3, but at least they are easier to replace.

[copy-paster]

Taito F3 is probably may favorite hardware yet it's also deceptively trickiest system to emulate, as well as Konami GX. I would pick CPS1 and 2, Toaplan V2, Cave PGM, Psikyo SH2 as among my favorites too.

While ago I was reading about Namco NB-1 hardware specs and info, the one that runs NebulasRay. Turns out it was a purely meant to be 2D-oriented games, and seeing how NR runs on the system it felt like they used some sort of black magic there.

[Rastan78]

I'm guessing all the 3D looking stuff in Nebulas Ray is pre-rendered like Donkay Kong Country, Blazing Star etc?

[copy-paster]

I'm guessing all the 3D looking stuff in Nebulas Ray is pre-rendered like Donkay Kong Country, Blazing Star etc?

Yes it is. I completely forgot about DKC released at the same year too although 8 months later to NR. The latter have brighter colors but from hardware comparison standpoint, DKC looks more impressive.

[Rastan78]

—So after many twists and turns, you finally debuted Rayforce at the 1993 Jamma show. How did that go?
Katou: It was crunch time then, and we were spending nights at the company dorm. Go to work, back to the dorm, go to work, back to the dorm… I kind of lost my sense of time, and don’t really remember that period too well, including the show. About all I remember is that I was pissed about NebulasRay. (laughs)

Yamashita: Same here. The only impression I have of it is NebulasRay. (laughs)

Katou: Pre-rendered CG was pretty new then, and we were thinking we’d like to try using it, but Namco beat us to the punch.

Yamashita: At the time, during the Rayforce development, our department wasn’t doing any CG rendering. For example, the asteroids in stage 1, those were all rotated manually. Katou drew the animation frames by hand.

Katou: I digitized an image of a rock, then slowly rotated it and warped the image, making corrections by hand.

Yamashita: Yeah, it kind of looks like CG, but it was all drawn by hand. We labored to make the power-ups in Rayforce rotate correctly, and I was mad at NebulasRay when I saw how cleanly they rotated their objects with CG.

Nebulasray even made the RayForce team jealous lol

[BrianC]

I love Namco System 2. Lots of good stuff on that and some nice sprite scaling. That hardware has Assault, Rolling Thunder 2, Metal Hawk, Golly Ghost, Ordyne, Cosmo Gang the Video, Steel Gunner, and Burning Force. Good stuff!